Michael McDermott

Some artists take decades to arrive. Chicago singer-songwriter Michael McDermott has been arriving — album after album, song after song — for thirty-plus years. With Flowers From The Graveyard, his new full-length on Pauper Sky Records arriving August 21, 2026, the arrival may finally be undeniable. McDermott has long occupied a peculiar place in American music: extravagantly praised — by Stephen King, by the Washington Post, by Hollywood Reporter — and perpetually on the verge. Raised on the dual gospel of early Dylan and the Stones, Tom Waits and the Who, Woody Guthrie and Van Morrison, he has never made a record that fits neatly into a marketing category. That restless refusal to be contained is, of course, precisely what makes him essential. Flowers From The Graveyard collects 11 self-penned songs that move fluidly between anthemic rock and bruised introspection, between political fury and hard-won philosophical calm. It is the work of a songwriter who has, as he puts it, stopped trying to control what was never his to control. The Washington Post once wrote that McDermott "may prove to be one of his generation's greatest talents." The operative word in that sentence is may. With Flowers From The Graveyard, the conditional tense is no longer required. His time has come.